John Cornford
] Rupert John Cornford (27 December 1915 – 28 December 1936) was an English poet. He was the son of the poets F.M. Cornford and Frances Cornford. Life Cornford was born in Cambridge, and named after Rupert Brooke (who was a friend of his parents), but preferred to use his second name. He was educated at Stowe School and Trinity College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate, reading history, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He was two or three years younger than the group of Trinity College communists including Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and James Klugmann. Another Cambridge student, who would play a major part in his life, was Margot Heinemann. They were lovers, and he addressed both poems and letters to her. He also had a relationship with a Welsh woman, Rachel (Ray) Peters, with whom he had a child: James Cornford, who was subsequently adopted and brought up by his grandparents, Francis and Frances Cornford. A photograph of Peters and Cornford can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, London. From 1933 he was directly involved in Communist Party work, in London, and became associated with Harry Pollitt. During the Spanish Civil War he both recruited in Cambridge for the International Brigade, and fought in the war himself, inspired in part by the Germans in the Thälmann Battalion.Antifascism and Memory in East Germany - Remembering the International Brigades 1945-1989 - McLellan, Josie; Oxford Historical Monographs, Page 27 He saw action at first in a Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) unit in Aragon in August 1936, before returning home, and coming back in December. He was killed at Lopera, near Córdoba.http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPcornford.htm His brother Christopher continued to be active in politics until well into the 1980s. Writing In poetic terms, Cornford was no modernist -- as George Orwell pointed out in 1940, he represented continuity with the older, imperial tradition. Publications Non-fiction *''Communism Was My Waking Time'' (edited by Boris Aleksandrovitch Gilenson). Moscow: Foreign Languages Press, 1958. Collected editions *''Understand the Weapon, Understand the Wound: Selected writings of John Cornford'' (edited by Jonathan Galassi). Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1976. *''Collected Writings'' (edited by Jonathan Galassi). Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1986. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:John Cornford, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Ind. Web, June 22, 2014. See also * List of British poets References *Pat Sloan, ed., John Cornford: A Memoir (1938) * Journey to the Frontier; Two roads to the Spanish Civil War by Peter Stansky and William Abrahams Notes External links ;Poems * Poem of the Week: "Poem" by John Cornford at The Guardian. * Selected Poetry of (Rupert) John Cornford (1915-1936) (3 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. * Rupert John Cornford at PoemHunter (4 poems). ;Audio/video * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m17y6 Great Lives: Series 19 John Cornford] ;About * John Cornford at Spartacus Educational. *John Cornford at Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism. *"Saint John" Category:1915 births Category:1936 deaths Category:English poets Category:Old Stoics Category:British people of the Spanish Civil War Category:English communists Category:Military personnel killed in the Spanish Civil War Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets